By Gary Farrow, Danville Historical Society
September brought news about how the Union dealt with its deserters. Two men on opposite sides, whose twisted souls were fired earlier in the cauldron that was the Kansas-Missouri Border War, led their “troops” on a mission of murdering, ransacking and plundering non-combatants. The battle for Eastern Tennessee — Northern Georgia continued to heave to and fro.
Military Expectations
Headquarters Army of the Potomac Aug 29 – The execution of substitute deserters sentenced to death in General Orders No. 84 took place today. More than ordinary interest was exhibited on the execution of military law, and it is estimated that not less than 25,000 persons were present…The ground was selected, and every arrangement so complete that no accidents occurred to mar the solemnity of the proceedings….
The criminals were sitting upon their respective coffins with yawning graves in their rear…. At the order to fire, 86 muskets were discharged, and instant death was announced by the Surgeons in attendance as a result. The bodies were then placed in their respective graves, and the clergy performed the last religious rites over the deceased.
By Dwayne Langmaid
First of my remembering much of Arnie, and of course Shirl, they were living in half of the little house across from the old North Danville store. Rather tight quarters by today’s standards, but certainly a step-up from the tin-can tiny trailer that had been home. Before that, I’m told Arnie went to the St. Johnsbury Trade School, worked at C. H. Goss, married Shirl in ’42, and then did three years with the Army in Europe until the end of the Big One.
After getting out, Arnie and Shirl bought the tin-can and lived in Springfield where Arnie was a machinist in one of the big shops. A couple years later, we–Hom, Boo, Joe and Snug–started coming along. This prompted the move to Arthur Sanborn’s little house. Arnie mechaniced out back in the garage that still stands there and helped his dad, Burl, in the woods. Wrenching and logging didn’t seem to be making ends meet, so he went to work for Fairbanks Scales, rapidly going through the foundry–drilling to planning to milling and lathe work.
In 1950, Arnie and Shirl bought the farm where Snug and Smitty (Don and Dianne) are now. The place was pretty rough. They, with the help of our grandparents, aunts and uncles, hoed and dug, ripped and tore until in the summer of ’51, we moved in. The old house was plenty big enough, but we didn’t dally running down to the cook stove on nippy mornings.
by Mark Moore, Historian and Archivist, Danville Historical Society
1863. The third year of the war. The music exalting medal-bedecked glory and the bloodless romance of a quick 90-day war had faded long ago. In its place was endless, mindless slogging–the cleaning of weapons, large and small, marching with no discernible purpose—the killing and dying with an equally pointless objective.
This proved to be the rule in the war in the west. The bloodletting at Fredericksburg and Antietam, to name two, proved early on that there would be no quick, dramatic, glittering northern victories. Chancellorsville had shown the superiority of some southern commanding generals so Lincoln would have to engage on a continuous revolving door of command for the Army of the Potomac replacing the useless Major General Joe Hooker with fish-eyed Pennsylvanian George Meade, known to his troops as Old Snapping Turtle. Confederate General Robert E. Lee, on other hand, lost his second-in-command, his boldest tactician and architect of the victory at Chancellorsville, “Stonewall” Jackson, to the gunfire of his own troops in the evening twilight.